A little while ago, I made it my quest to migrate off of Windows 10 and try Linux. It was pretty intimidating, and I didn't quite know where I was going or what I wanted to achieve, but I figured I wouldn't get anywhere if I just sat around doing nothing. So, I forged ahead and tried out a bunch of things.
Something that I quickly gravitated towards is a desktop environment called KDE Plasma. If you're unsure what a "desktop environment" is, it's essentially a graphical interface that sits on top of your Linux distribution. That means you can add KDE Plasma to Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, pretty much anything that supports it.
As such, as I distro hopped around, trying to find my forever home, I always dragged KDE Plasma along behind me. Sure, I could have tried out different desktop environments and seen if something other than KDE Plasma was a better fit; however, KDE Plasma was doing a lot of heavy lifting when it came to encouraging me to use Linux over Windows, so I just installed it by default every time I distro-hopped.
KDE Plasma gives me a ton of customization options
Something that Windows has gone backward in
One thing that always confused me about Windows 11 is how it has fewer customization options than Windows 10. It's difficult to see Windows 11 as an improvement to Windows 10 when it doesn't let you do all the things that the older operating system can do. For example, the Start menu is not resizable; you take whatever shape Microsoft gives you, and you like it. And don't even get me started on how you can't stick the Taskbar on any edge of the screen you want without third-party tools.
Does KDE Plasma have that issue? Nope. Do you want a Start menu that takes up the entire screen when it's opened? You can set that up. Want a thin one instead? You can do that, too. You can stick the Taskbar on any screen edge you like, on different edges across your monitors, and even have multiple Taskbars on one screen. Would I ever want three Taskbars on one screen? Probably not. But it's nice knowing that if I ever did want that, I could.
KDE Plasma comes with some stellar features built in
Some I prefer over Windows
When I first gave KDE Plasma a try, I mainly did so because I thought it looked great. And it does look great! I've always liked how the UI looks and feels, and that's a huge part of why I install it on every Linux distro possible.
But when you start poking around the desktop environment's innards, you start noticing that it's not just a pretty face. It actually has some really killer apps included that have actually stopped me from going back to Windows. And discovering those apps is a ton of fun.
My big "aha" moment was when I stumbled blindly into KDE Connect. I had no idea what it was at first, or how it'd be useful. But once I had connected my phone to it and given it a try, I realised it was KDE Plasma's version of Phone Link app on Windows. And after toying with it a bit, I realised it was actually better than Phone Link on Windows. The nail on Phone Link's coffin was discovering that, while Microsoft's offering predictably only works within its ecosystem, KDE Connect's open-source nature means it can run on anything...including Windows.
KDE Plasma has the politest pop-up I've ever seen
You won't see Microsoft acting this rosy
The final reason why KDE Plasma has kept me on Linux for so long is how much it respects you as a person. The reason I say KDE Plasma respects the user more than Windows is because, for 99.99% percent of the time, KDE just...leaves you alone. You install it, it gets itself set up, and then it shuts up and doesn't pester you again. Compared to Microsoft adding a constant stream of features people don't want, stuffing full-screen ads for its products during setup, and screaming at Windows 10 users to upgrade already, KDE Plasma wins by doing absolutely nothing.
You may have noticed that I said that KDE Plasma leaves you alone for 99.99% percent of the time. So, what's that 0.01%? Well, I'm now going to describe to you the single, most obtrusive thing KDE Plasma has ever done to me. It's the only instance the KDE team sent a pop-up to my PC without my permission, and I am not joking when I say that this isthe most egregious thing the desktop environment has ever done to me. Brace yourself.
One day, I logged into my Fedora KDE PC. A small pop-up appeared at the bottom-right of my screen. It informed me that KDE was doing a yearly fundraiser, and that I could donate if I wanted to. The pop-up literally only appears once a year for the fundraiser. If you click "Donate," you're taken to the fundraiser. If you click "No thanks," the pop-up vanishes and will not resurface for another year.
That's it. That's the most intrusive thing KDE Plasma has ever done to me, the 0.01%. Given how much I use KDE, I think the team deserves more than a yearly pop-up. Despite that, all the team asks is that you get an annual reminder with a "No thanks" button, and not a "Remind me in 3 days" one, which alone makes it so much friendlier than Windows. Seriously, if Microsoft took 10% of KDE's respect for its userbase, it'd make far better operating systems.
KDE Plasma keeps me from returning to Windows
So, after literal decades of using Windows, I finally found a new home, partly because of Microsoft's recent attitude, and partly because of KDE Plasma. And given how KDE can only get better over the years, I think I'll be sticking around for a long time.